LM INSTALLATION

10 BAINBRIDGE LIVING / Fall 2020

a lifetime of loyalty

From putting a hitch on a car to installing grain bins for farmers, LM Installation has grown with the times and proven their loyalty to customers the last 30 years.

Some people move South for retirement, wanting to spend their golden years in the sun and warmth. Others move down for familial reasons, which is what brought Lee Merchant to Bainbridge in the 90’s; specifi cally, his wife was originally from Bainbridge.

Having grown up in Caribou, Maine, one of the northernmost cities on the East Coast, Merchant was raised in the signmaking business with his father.

“Well, working with your dad, he’s always right, and you do what he says and there’s no questions,” Merchant recounted, “Being from up there, you work from dark to dark, because you only have about six to eight months to do a whole year’s worth of work. Up there, it gets light about 4:30 a.m.., and goes dark about 9:50 p.m. So, you had plenty of daytime to do what you had to do.”

Aft er spending two years in Bainbridge working for others, Merchant decided to go into business for himself, and started LM Installation in 1992. He spoke on those early years, and how far the business has come, saying, “Th ere was times I’d have to go work for someone else when we fi rst started and make it happen, and now we have about eight men going right now.”

Initially, Merchant started as a sign business. However, Merchant found he had to expand LM Installation’s off erings to metal fabrication in order to adequately service the community.

“We’ll do anything as simple as putting a hitch on your car, all the way up to a multi-million-dollar job over there at Elberta Crate putting in another drier,” he said. To work in Bainbridge required “versatility”, as he put it, “We have to deal with farmers, because we are a farming community. So we do all this stuff , from grain bins, to farming, whatever it takes.”

Despite growing his business over 30 years, there have been bumps and problems along the way. Even before the Pandemicera labor shortages, even before Hurricane Michael, Merchant had problems retaining workers. “It started before Michael,” he said. Even now, despite being able to have eight employees, LM Installation only has six. When Michael hit, it had both a positive and negative eff ect on business. “Every good employee we had went to work for themselves… Michael paid for a lot of stuff , gave us a lot of heads up and work ahead, and we’re still working on Michael now.”

In addition to labor shortages, supply chain issues have also impacted LM Installation. None of this has stopped Merchant.

“It’s diffi cult, fun, exciting, all of the above,” he said. “Disappointing, sometimes. But the gratifi cation of it, and having what you do and making what you got overrides it all.” He continued, “Th e way I’ve always looked at it is, I’m responsible for everyone that works here. So that’s a big responsibility, and there’s been times that they get paychecks and I don’t, and we make sure that they go home with their stuff .”

He concluded, saying, “It’s been special. We learn from our employees, we have relationships with our employees that make us a family setup… we can’t do it without our employees, no matter how it works. We are held back or pushed forward, and the ones we have now have really pushed to keep us in line with what we should be doing. Th at’s very respectable on their side. Th en again we can’t do anything without our customers either, we’ve had some of the same customers for 30 years, and we really are thankful for that.”

Winter 2022 / BAINBRIDGE LIVING 11